Alewnander Winchell. 105 
of these shells were from the Silurian of Tennessee. For lack of 
books and specimens for comparison he did not bring the results 
to such a state of completion as to render it proper to offer them 
for publication—hoping for future opportunities of study. 
Returning to Syracuse, he devoted a month to the study of 
fossils from Chautauqua county, regarded by him as belonging to 
the same age as the “Marshall group.” He had _ collected these 
on occasion of a visit to the Chautauqua Lake Encampment, where 
he delivered two or three popular lectures. This study was made 
the basis of a communication to the American Association at its 
Buffalo meeting, where he also presented the results of a study of 
Endoceras. He participated in a ‘Normal Institute” of the college 
of fine arts, delivering four lectures, and taking some part also in 
the field work. 
He was now importuned by the editors of the Christian Union 
and the Methodist Quarterly Review, for communications on the 
subject of evolution, with particular reference to Huxley’s recent 
lectures in New York. * He also visited Prof. O. C. Marsh,at New 
Haven, for the purpose of examining the specimens which had 
served as the basis of his later announcements. He wrote alarge 
manuscript of about twenty thousand words, on ‘‘Kvolution,’’ 
designed primarily for the Methodist Quarterly Review, but the 
matter remains unused. Karly in December, 1876, he removed 
his family to Ann Arbor, where he had retained his old home, 
being convinced that it would never become desirable to settle 
permanently in Syracuse. 
1877. After a short term of service at Syracuse, in the months 
of January and February, 1877, during which he wrote a series of 
eight lectures on the scientific evidences sustaining the doctrine 
of evolution, covering the ground of its philosophic and theolog- 
ical consequences, and constituting a full monograph, and drew 
up an extended syllabus of lithology for the use of students, he 
again transferred the scene of his labors to Nashville, Tenn. , where, 
with a series of lectures on geology and zoology, he organized a 
biological laboratory which was very popular with the students, 
and, under the optional or ‘‘school” system prevailing there, 
became quite crowded with persons unprepared by previous study 
and discipline. During this term he instituted an elaborate series 
of experiments upon living germs in the atmosphere, employing 
* See Christian Union, Oct. 11, 1876, and Meth. Quar. Rev., April, 1877. 
